Chapter 12 - Need, Part 1
Kirk lay on the spare bunk in Lt. Nangana's empty quarters. The quiet washed over him, urging him to calm, but also made him long for noise to break up its power. He huffed, thought he should be getting better at handling this sort of disturbance of the mind, given his copious chances to practice. He forced his eyes open, pulled the monitor over and checked the time. Spock might be done with project meetings for the day. Might be in his dorm room. Kirk requested a connection and lay back again.
Comm informing him the connection was established jarred Kirk out of sleep. He sat up, pulled the screen over and arranged a pillow to prop himself up. The achingly familiar visage solidified on screen, Spock in his blue gray Academy one-piece, his hair getting maybe a tad long down his cheeks. Kirk wondered why he felt what he did for him, but it felt just as real as ever.
"Spock."
"James." Spock took him in, asked in an even tone, "Are you all right?"
"It's been a bit rough. But I'm mostly all right."
Spock's expression didn't change.
Kirk said, "It wasn't the Militants that were the problem. But I can't go into more detail." Kirk bit his lips. "Our ETA to earth has been pushed back a day and a half, at least. Just so you know."
Spock nodded.
"You okay? Any more run-ins with upperclassmen?" Kirk tilted his head. "Or captains? Or admirals?"
"I attempted to be more deferential today to the senior cadets. I believe it had the outcome of confusing them."
Kirk tried to smile. "Well, that's progress."
Spock tilted his head. "You cannot discuss in what way you are unwell in any more detail?"
Kirk rubbed his eyes. "No. But I'll be better after some shut-eye."
"I should sign off and let you do so, in that case."
Kirk lifted his chin. "You are unusually unemotional today."
Spock nodded. "Zienn taught me a second level method of emotional distancing. It is rather effective."
"You're just practicing then? Or does it turn out to be easier to live like that?"
Spock's gaze shifted away from the monitor. "Yes and no. Do you wish me to cease using it?"
Kirk took a deep breath. "I don't know what I want."
"In that case, I concur that you require sleep."
Seeing Spock was reminding Kirk that he never trusted love before meeting Spock. He wondered what had changed.
"Can I help you with anything, James? Is Commander Graham aware you are having difficulty?"
Kirk bit his jaw down on scolding Spock for babying and second guessing him.
Spock grew more stoic. "My question has displeased you. But I refuse to withdraw it."
"Yes. She knows." Kirk felt empty and, on top of that, annoyed with himself. He longed to see Spock as much as he longed for more time to question and comprehend his emotions.
"Have you received your new transport arrangements for the Lohanna Sector?" Stating this question revealed the first cracks in Spock's level demeanor.
Kirk looked at his nails. "Not yet. So, you and I will have a little time. I need to see you. Talk to you." Kirk thought, and try and resist asking for a meld.
"If I sign off, James. Will you sleep?"
Kirk raised his head. He'd been deep in thought. "Yes, I will. Talk to you later. Kirk out."
Kirk's last glimpse of Spock was of his fine angled brows pulling together in concern. Kirk shoved the monitor away and sat with his head on his arms, propped on his knees. He didn't recognize himself. He could get through a lot if he still saw himself within. Trouble was, the Kirk who intensely wanted someone for no good reason and a few weeks later would spectacularly break up was more recognizable, and more comfortable.
Kirk woke to the sound of the door swishing open. Lt. Nangana stepped just inside. He observed Kirk, then waved someone in. It was the taller of the two Vulcan Healers.
"Sorry sir. Commander's orders."
Kirk pushed himself up, scratched his chest. He'd gone to sleep in his uniform and his skin felt pressed into wrinkles.
"I see."
The healer approached, stood with hands steepled, studying him with new attention. Kirk rotated his stocking feet to the side, remained sitting on the bed with them dangling.
Kirk had longed for her hands earlier. Now he felt ill at the thought, acutely ashamed of the desire.
"I don't want a meld," Kirk said in Vulcan.
"If I may, sir," Nangana said. "Commander Graham strongly insists. She wishes you to avoid difficulties with your next assignment. She states that if your experiences are evaluated immediately and the incident closed, that you are unlikely to have further questions arising about them."
"Right. You speak Vulcan?"
"No, sir. I'm wearing a translator earpiece to assist with the prisoners." He touched a broad hand to his left ear. "Do you prefer that I remove it?"
"Yes, Lieutenant, I would. Thank you."
Nangana bent his head, plucked off a c shaped device from around his ear and placed it on the desk. He stepped back to his previous position, great arms latched in front of himself, gaze distant and fixed in the direction of the door. Present but unassuming. He said, "Commander Graham also stated that if you preferred her to be present rather than myself, that I should page her."
This heated Kirk's chest. He didn't want to be babied by Graham either.
Kirk turned back to the Healer, resumed speaking in Vulcan. "I don't know your name."
The healer raised her brows. "T'Loun."
"Hello, T'Loun. I'm James. And what temple did you train at, T'Loun. And where do you reside now?"
There was a longer pause. "Temple Lorpathin. I have always been there. I was not informed that you spoke Vulcan."
"Of a sort, I'm told." Kirk breathed in, let his shoulders slump. He disliked explaining himself. Disliked having no real choices. Silence fell.
Nangana said, "Would you prefer Commander Graham, sir?"
Kirk rubbed his eyes. Graham knew he'd been mind raped. He almost said yes, so he could say something vicious to her when she showed up. He shook himself. He was on edge and acting poorly both with Spock and now. Graham was doing her job, reasonably and considerately. Kirk had no right be pissed off about that.
"No. Lieutenant. Just please take a seat. I don't need a guard. I just don't want to be alone during this."
Nangana grew concerned, looked Kirk over in a mystified way that assured he did not know what the issue was. He nodded, pulled the desk chair out and sat his bulk in it.
Kirk met T'Loun's aged, damp eyes. "I don't like melds with Vulcans I don't know well. And I want to tell you to go away."
"I cannot force a meld on you, as you are certainly aware." Her voice was lower, coarser.
"It's not you doing the forcing. It's circumstance. I don't have a professional choice in the matter." Kirk pinched the bridge of his nose. Spock would never define this as cheating on him no matter how deeply intimate a meld felt. Kirk considered T'Loun's parchment like wrinkles, her long face and proud nose. At some point, Kirk had taken on Spock's attitude about melds. At least he could count on Spock understanding his reticence, if no one else.
"What do you want me to do?" Kirk asked.
"Lie down. With your head there." She indicated the foot of the bed.
Kirk rotated, put his stocking feet on the pillow, lay back and tried to let his the layers of energy out of his limbs. She approached, hands clasped, eyes half closed. Alarm filled Kirk's arms, he held them down at his sides, hooked his thumbs under his hips.
T'Loun had kept her word about not altering Zulan. Kirk could find a lot of trust in that. Her hand reached out, dry rough fingers found his temple, his cheek. She began speaking low in Vulcan. Kirk stared beyond her at the ceiling. His heart thudded, readying for frantic movement. He felt the stirrings of a presence that shouldn't be there, resisted jerking his head to the side with great willpower. He wanted to trust, but there was little basis to. He dearly wanted to feel another presence all the way through him, all the way into the painful emptiness. He hated that it wasn't Spock with him now, hated this indecent desire for closeness with anyone capable of it. The fingers withdrew.
"I estimate that you need time to assimilate events before such exposure," T'Loun said. "Perhaps an alternative technique. One where I probe selectively only so that I can describe your condition accurately but without the same intimacy. Will that be better?"
Kirk lifted his head to look at her. "Yes. That sounds much better. Thank you."
"Rest back," she admonished.
She put her hand on Kirk's forehead as if checking his temperature. Kirk felt a lassitude seeping through him, wrap him up like a cocoon. He gave into it with fatalistic enjoyment, felt a tingle of her approval at his aiding her efficiency. Her index and middle fingers strayed through his hair, moved around his head, paused, moved on, paused.
"Remember the treatment room," she said, voice hypnotic.
Kirk reluctantly did. He worked his mind back to being dragged from the cell, pushed into the chair. He remembered his confusion, remembered the distressful emptiness, remembered knowing he was not tied down but could not rescue himself. Remembered trying to stand, to fight for sovereignty over his own will, but failing even that simple, usually automatic thing. The crushing helplessness and emptiness.
She asked him to remember Adams's voice. Kirk did, with a clarity he wouldn't have thought possible. She walked him through the memory with her voice, sensing his thoughts but not invading them. Kirk remembered falling to the floor and struggling there before apparently blacking out.
The gnarled hands withdrew, returned to steepled. "That is sufficient to report to your superior. I can do more, but it would, by necessity, involve a meld."
Kirk sat up, which forced her to step back out of the way. "You must still be fatigued from treating Zulan."
She nodded crookedly, looked older. "That is an excuse on your part, I strongly estimate."
"I can get help on earth," Kirk said. "We are reporting there next."
"I am failing in my duty as promised to your superior. By my oath, I require more assurance than that."
Kirk pieced Vulcan words together as best he could. "This need for a meld makes me unwilling to submit to you. Certainly you can understand that given how intimate Vulcans are with each other this way."
"That is irrelevant. Will you find proper care on your planet?"
"That's not a problem. I have an exalted high priest at my disposal."
She paused, tilted her head. "You do? This is true?"
Kirk hopped off the bed, smiled for the first time since the mission went wrong. "I do. And others besides." But the thought of melding with Sarek when he hungered this much made him feel queasy, almost incestual.
Kirk raised his hand, gave his best approximation of a Vulcan greeting. T'Loun returned it, had no choice but to depart or risk rudeness.
Nangana heaved out of the chair to escort her out. He nodded at Kirk with an official air before the door swished closed.
Kirk leaned back against the bed. They'd deliver the prisoners to Vulcan and then his duties would be finished. He'd have a day on the way to earth to sort himself out to avoid being less than himself when he encountered Spock.
Sarek was already seated at the tea table reading from a padd when Spock arrived.
Spock stood beside the table, bent his head. He was copiously applying Zienn's technique for emotional isolation today. He intended to spend brunch dutifully immutable and proper. Being late would be a poor start.
"Was I mistaken regarding the time of our meeting, Father?"
"I began early. Take a seat." Sarek continued reading.
Spock scooted his chair in, poured himself tea. He selected and bit into a small disk of pokeberry pie.
"Do not let your mother see you eating that."
Spock put the pie down and wiped the dark berry juice off his finger. "Does mother not approve the menu?"
"There was only one of those on the tray. I assume it was intended for me."
Spock stared at the bitten off half remaining on his plate. He was discovering a limitation of Zienn's technique. Unlike the priest, Spock had a plethora of potential emotions not yet faded into a false past memory and any one of them could rise up into the immediate with a change in circumstance.
"I should not have taken it in that case," Spock said.
Sarek rotated in his chair to set his padd aside. "You may have it. I am certain it is harmless to you. Though your mother worries otherwise."
"It is one of my favorites." Spock stated this with proper factuality.
Sarek topped up his tea. "Only because by the time you had a real tricorder your mother insisted the chef here at the earth embassy stop serving them. The fruit's compounds are highly mutagenic to most earth mammals."
Spock halted with the second bite halfway to his mouth. Sarek held his steaming cup in both hands, observing him. Spock studied the small dark berries leaching out of the crust. He hadn't brought his tricorder, although he did have an old one in his room.
"I observed you eat a number of those when you were small," Sarek said. "With no bad outcome. Empirical evidence that I would trust as reliable."
Spock nibbled rather than eat the remainder in a single bite. The complex flavor played with every part of his palate. Even with age, with better disciplines, food undermined his internal focus. He wanted to eat the rest of it, but held off. He considered the options on the tray instead.
"I received a notice from the Hampton," Sarek said.
"Can you share its contents?"
"They requested Healer-priests be sent to Tantalus on a fast ship. There was at least one prisoner who Starfleet estimated would not survive to reach Vulcan without expert assistance."
"Can you say which prisoner?"
"Zulan."
"Interesting" Spock plucked up a square of marmalade upside-down cake instead of finishing the pie. "I recall him as virile and hardened, without mercy or revealed weakness. What happened to him?"
"I was not given particulars. Only that he had been poorly treated. Have you communicated with James?"
"Very briefly." Spock had arrived with those potential emotions firmly put aside. "He was not entirely well. The mission encountered some difficulty that he could not speak of in detail, except to say that the Militants were not the cause." Spock clasped his hands. "Now I am additionally concerned for James as well."
"You will not make progress on your concerns without more data. How were your classes this week?"
"They ranged from acceptable to good. My project on the Apollo must conclude this week. I have two other group projects ongoing. I am also attempting to better maximize my cultural understanding as part of my usual daily interactions."
Sarek's face shifted, his brows flattened, pulled inward. "The way you state the latter does not sound promising."
"Father, are you chastising me for being too precise in my language?"
"Yes."
Spock looked down at his plate. "I see." Zienn's technique continued to fail Spock. He could not possibly predict this many emotions from one encounter with his father. He tried to set aside this latest set of reactions, plus embarrassment, which he was more practiced at using other techniques so he floundered briefly before settling back to stoic.
Sarek put his cup aside, pulled a plate closer and studied the tray of cakes. "You have learned a new discipline but have not mastered it."
"Yes."
"By all means, practice it if you believe it useful." Sarek's voice grew easier. "You, as a being, exist in a middle ground, Spock. I would encourage you to find your place there as well, a place where you need not illogically expend energy trying to remain elsewhere."
Spock laced his fingers together at the edge of the table, stared at the half eaten remains on his plate. He felt very young.
"You are changing your mind about a great number of things," Spock said.
Sarek stiffened. "I am adjusting my thinking." He poured more steaming tea into his cup. "Properly. Based on ongoing advice from one I am not allowed to ignore."
Spock looked down at his hands. "I did not realize Zienn was continuing to communicate with you."
The steaming cup hid part of Sarek's face as he raised it. "Regularly. He informs me that you are dutiful student of his instruction. I assume the same at the Academy although I do not have a means of verifying. Do you know your rank in your class?"
"I believe that is officially published at the halfway point in the term and at the conclusion of the term."
"How are you progressing at it?"
"I have not attempted to estimate this, Father. Is it important to you?"
Sarek's face grew flat. Spock took his answer from that.
Spock said, "I have another tutoring session with T'Gowen this week. Her anthropological and ethnographic background was indeed helpful. My general understanding of the sphere of Galactic Cultures improved, but I am no more able to succeed at the assignments. I will keep trying. I have another session with her on Wednesday."
"Are there other topics in which you require assistance?"
Spock resisted reacting. "Literature."
"We will find you someone for that as well."
Spock ate the last bite of his cake, wiped his hands. "I am not displeased to do poorly in this."
Sarek's disapproving left brow went all the way up.
Spock bowed his head. "I will attend to whatever tutor you see fit to find for me, Father."
"I should think."
